Metaphysical conceit is a literary tool used by poets in the 17th century to describe intangible concepts using verbose and paradoxical analogies. John Donne and Andrew Marvel were two famous metaphysical poets who used this tool. It is a type of ‘conceit’ that draws parallels between dissimilar objects, and it was seen as a way for writers to break free from established conceptual associations. An effective metaphysical conceit makes the reader look at something in an entirely new way.
Metaphysical conceit is a literary term that refers to a poet’s use of a somewhat unorthodox language and linguistic construct to describe the quality of an everyday concept. This literary tool, devised in the 17th century, is often used to describe seemingly intangible concepts such as the spiritual and emotional qualities of an entity, for example by using verbose and sometimes paradoxical analogies with objects, such as those of the earthly worlds thought to be worldly, philosophical, and alchemical in nature. Metaphysical conceit is only one type of ‘conceit’ found in the literature; a generic conceit can be described as an elaborate metaphor that draws parallels between two dissimilar objects. Petrarchian conceit is another kind, and it is from this conceit, famously used in love poems of the Elizabethan era, that the concept of metaphysical poetry and conceit as a genre arose. Its use is seen by some as a dramatic tool by which writers broke free from the established, expected, and orthodox conceptual associations common at the time.
The small group of men and women who began using the literary instrument in the 17th century were English lyricists believed to be associated and united by a desire for more robust and intellectual discourse through prose. Two of the best known metaphysical poets who used the metaphysical conceit prolifically were John Donne and Andrew Marvel. Donne is considered by some literary scholars to be a major poetic innovator of metaphysical poetry. His prose has often been seen as a direct reaction to the accepted Elizabethan form of the day. For example, nearly all of the English-language, “civilized” love prose published in Donne’s lifetime was in sonnet form, and Donne used crude, colloquial language that even seemed at times to mock the sonnet.
An effective metaphysical conceit is noteworthy when a seemingly absurd gesture of parallelism begins to feel surprisingly appropriate and makes the reader look at something in an entirely new way. For comparison, a poet employing Petrarchan conceit may describe a woman’s eyes as “bright as the stars in the night sky”, while the metaphysical poet, namely Richard Crashaw in this example, described the eyes of a woman as “two walking toilets; two weeping motions, transportable and compendious oceans”. Another example of a metaphysical conceit, showing how prose was considered vulgar and even blasphemous by many, is in Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 14,” which, among other shocking conceits, contains one comparing God to a rapist and invader violent. Modern poets such as TS Elliot and Emily Dickenson also used conceit in their prose.
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